Wicked Need (The Wicked Horse Series Book 3) (22 page)

I don’t
have her under the beloved title of “Mom” because she
doesn’t hold that honor. I stopped considering her my mom long
ago.

Little liar.

Swatting my
conscience away, I reject the phone call, sending it to voice mail. I
start to drop it back in my purse, but it starts ringing again.

Trish Lyons.

“You can
answer it if you need to,” Sloane says from her seat on the
ground. “Callie’s really laid back about personal calls.”

I don’t
want to answer it, but I recognize my mom’s antics and she’s
escalating. This isn’t the first time it’s happened.
Something is prompting her to reach out, and she’s following
the normal pattern.

First, it starts
with little texts.
Just
checking in, baby. How are you?

When I ignore them,
she turns on the “mom”
act a bit more.
Please
call me. Really worried about you.

Yeah, bullshit.

Then the calls
start. She starts to give more away on the voice mails she leaves.
Just
trying to reach you. I’m
in sort of a pickle and could use some help.

Followed by,
I
need some cash pretty quick, Catherine. They’re
going to turn my electricity off if not. Can you wire it to me?

And when that goes
unanswered, she gets nasty.
If
you don’t
send me some money, I’m going to keep calling and calling. I’m
not going away so just send the fucking money. You don’t want
me showing up on your doorstep.

And I so don’t
want her showing up on my doorstep. She did it once and made a huge
scene, which embarrassed the hell out of me in front of Samuel.

So when I finally
give her the money, it’s
so I can have a little bit of peace. It is usually short lived
because once she learned I was married to a billionaire, the requests
came more frequently. I never had the guts to tell Samuel what I was
doing, so I just took some cash advances off my card and would send
them to my mom when she asked. It kept her happy for a bit until it
didn’t anymore.

We’ve
been through the ignored texts, which she’s been sending me for
almost a week now. She called and left voice mails yesterday and the
day before. Today would be about the time she started to threaten me.

Normally, I would
ignore this call too but something in me is a bit different today
than it was even yesterday. This morning, I stood up to Kevin and
demanded something for myself.

That was something
I’m
not sure I’ve ever done before, and I don’t pretend
otherwise, probably would have never happened but for Rand taking me
in and putting me under his wing.

But still…
I can do this.

I can stand up to my
mother.

I connect the call
and say, “Hello
Trish.”

She doesn’t
even attempt to be offended because she’s not. She’s
never minded if I called her Mom or not. “I’m surprised
you actually answered. I have a better relationship with your voice
mail.”

“Because we
have no relationship at all,” I remind her in a tired voice, my
eyes sliding down to Sloane to see she’s got her head bent back
over the box, trying to be unobtrusive. But I don’t care if she
hears this. Hell, she’s watched me gang banged before, so why
hide my wretched mom at this point? “What can I do for you?”

She launches right
into her tale of woe. “Well,
I’ve had a major leak in the roof and I have to get it
replaced. It’s going to be pricey, and you know I just don’t
have that type of savings. Probably at least ten grand.”

My mom isn’t
the brightest bulb in the bunch, and I’m going to have to
assume any intellect I have at all was handed down from my dad. She
knew her daughter was married to a billionaire. She might not know
exactly how many zeroes that is, but she knows it’s a lot. The
few times I’ve seen her in in the past three years, she’s
seen the jewelry I sport, the Mercedes I drive, and the designer
clothing. I even had her over for dinner once to my palatial house,
maybe hoping to rub her face in the fact that I landed well despite
the things she did to screw me up.

Trish Lyons saw all
of that and yet she never asked for more than a few hundred dollars
at a time. Hell, I’d
drop five-hundred dollars on a haircut every six weeks, so it was
nothing to me. She would hit me up for the same amount every few
months, so in reality, it wasn’t that bad. Not sure why I
dragged things out… ignoring her texts and calls until she
turned nasty, then I’d eventually give in and hand the money
over.

No, wait…
I do know why I did that.

I did that because
there was a small part of me that still considered her to be my
mother. Some remote part of my heart that perhaps pitied her for her
shortcomings and lack of love. Maybe I even did it in gratitude for
the life of luxury that had been bestowed upon me.

But regardless, all
those years, poor, intellectually challenged Trish Lyons never asked
for more than a pittance. I suspected it was maybe to buy some dope
or something.

Now she’s
asking for ten grand and that’s quite the jump.

And I know exactly
why.

“You heard
Samuel died,” I guess as I pace alongside the conference room
table.

“Just terrible
news, sweetie,” she coos at me in such a fake, syrupy voice
that my teeth start aching. “Are you okay?”

“I’m
fine,” I say in a clipped voice. “And I don’t have
the money.”

“Well, of
course you do,” she says as if I’m the silliest person in
the world. “Your husband was rich. He’s dead. So you’re
rich.”

If only life were
that simple.

“Samuel cut me
out of the will,” I tell my mother, which is not something I
believe at all. In fact, I suspect I’m due a big chunk of
change and can buy a new trailer for my mom, not just a roof, if I
wanted. But I’ll never tell her that. She doesn’t deserve
to know.

Because if I’m
cutting out the poisonous past and refusing to be owned anymore, I’ll
be damned if I’m going to let my mom maintain any type of hold
on me. At the most, I might give her a tiny bit of money once the
estate gets settled, but then I’m done with her.

“I don’t
believe it,” Trish says, scoffing. “He wouldn’t.”

“Well, he
did,” I snap.

“I’m
coming over. We can talk about this,” my mom says in a brusque
voice.

“I’m not
in Vegas.”

Small pause. Can
hear the wheels turning. “Where
are you?” she asks.

“Look…
I’m at work and can’t talk,” I say, ignoring her
question. She doesn’t deserve to know where I am.

“But what am I
supposed—?”

“Take care of
yourself,” I say softly and disconnect the phone.

Is that the last
I’ll
hear of Trish Lyons?

Nope. There’ll
be another day, another dollar asked for.

The one good thing
about not having a pot to piss in right now is that it makes my
conversations with my mom a lot shorter.

Rand

I note Cat dressed a
lot differently for work today as she walks into the Snake River
Brewery to meet me for dinner in a pair of dark jeans and a
form-fitted plaid shirt with expensive leather boots that come up
over her knees.

Yesterday, she was
all polished sophistication when she left. She came back to the
apartment tired, sweaty, and with dirt smudges all over her dress.
Over frozen pizza because neither one of us wanted to cook, she told
me about her day, which apparently included unloading and sorting
dirty boxes filled with old campaign stuff, Sloane telling Cat all
about our encounter together, as well as a call from her loser
mother. It was a full day for her.

Cat didn’t
seem bent out of shape that I have carnal knowledge of Sloane, but I
expect that’s because Cat has carnal knowledge of Sloane’s
man, Cain. Ordinary people would never understand the dynamics of
this type of sexual freedom, but hell… sometimes it seems a
little weird to me as well.

But no more weird I
suppose than the fact that I seem to fall more for Cat each day…
hell, each moment we’re together… and I can’t seem
to figure out if these feelings are real or fanned perhaps brighter
by an unexpressed desire to be a hero to her.

She walks toward me,
hips swaying, and every man in the bar turns his head to look at her.
Her eyes are only for me as I stand up from my stool to greet her.
Cat steps into me, her hands to my waist and she goes to tiptoes to
press her lips to the lower side of my jaw. “Hey,”
she says softly.

“Good day at
work, honey?” I ask playfully as I drop my hand to her ass and
cop a quick feel.

She laughs and steps
past me, plopping down on the stool I had been saving for her. I take
my seat beside her, and she takes a grateful swig of the Snake River
Pale Ale I’d
had poured for her by the bartender when I’d arrived about
fifteen minutes ago. I call out to one of the bartenders who has his
back to me, counting money from the cash drawer. “Ryan…
go ahead and put in a barbeque chicken quesadilla and a bison
burger.”

He looks over his
head and says, “Sure
thing, Rand.”

“How’d
you know I wanted a burger?” Cat asks. She knows I ordered the
burger for her since I know she doesn’t like chicken, which is
strange because I thought everyone likes chicken. Still, it’s a
unique fact about her that’s hard to forget.

“Lucky guess,”
I say with a smirk. “So seriously… how was your second
day of work?”

“More of the
same unpacking boxes, but Callie was there today and she started
educating me on what the process will be like over the next year.”

“Sounds fun,”
I say with trademark snark.

She smiles, but the
light doesn’t
last long before her eyes turn serious. “Did he ever show?”

She’s
talking about Kevin who had agreed to deliver the purported current
and signed estate paperwork of Samuel Vaughn. I expected him or
someone on his behalf to come to Westward Ink today and hand it off.

Well, that’s
not true. I actually expected him not to bring it but at the least
figured he’d call Cat with some bullshit excuse. Instead, there
wasn’t a peep from him all day.

Cat knows this
because she texted me about every hour for an update.

Did he show?

Do you have it?

Where do you
think he is?

He’s
not going to show, right?

I shake my head in
the negative to her original question. “I
ran by the apartment right after work to see if perhaps someone left
it in my mailbox. No one ever came by the shop.”

“Fuck, he’s
an asshole,” she mutters as she reaches for her beer. “Should
have known he wouldn’t follow through. My credit cards didn’t
get turned on either.”

“It’s
not because he’s an asshole, Cat,” I tell her, and she
turns to blink at me in surprise. “It’s because he
doesn’t have it. It doesn’t exist.”

“You think?”

“I more than
think,” I say confidently.

I’d
been thinking about it all day. If she was truly cut out of the will,
there was no reason to keep a signed copy from her. Kevin Vaughn was
bluffing to cut her out of his life with minimum fuss, and he was
banking on the fact that she was going to be the pliant and
subservient woman she was when Samuel was alive.

“Should I call
him?” she asks, her finger absently stroking up and down the
glass wet with condensation.

I shrug. “What’s
the point? He probably won’t answer, and if he does, he’ll
give you a round of bullshit. The fact of the matter is, you have a
copy of a valid trust agreement that leaves you money and a house.
It’s time to turn this over to an attorney and get this shit
sorted.”

Cat raises her gaze
to me, and she gives me a nod of agreement. “You’re
right. It’s time and I’ve got the money from my jewelry I
can use to hire an attorney now.”

“We’ll
call Bridger later and ask him if Jenna will handle it,” I tell
her as I lean sideways on my stool and bump my shoulder against hers.
“I’m sure she’ll give you a discount too.”

“Sounds good,”
she says, her voice sounding as relaxed and happy as I’ve ever
heard it.

“So, let’s
play ‘What If’,” I say as I turn on my stool to
face her a bit. “What if you ultimately find out you get
nothing from Samuel’s estate?”

Cat turns, her knees
brushing against my thigh. She rests a forearm on the bar, the other
on the back of my stool. “I
guess I’d have to be a better roommate and start paying you
rent, huh?”

“You’d
want to stay here?”

“I think so,”
she says hesitantly. “I know exactly what’s waiting for
me in Vegas. I think I’d like to explore the opportunities
here. And I will pay you rent as soon as I get my first paycheck.”

Hmmmmm…
that tells me exactly shit.

“You know
you’re not a roommate to me, right?” I tell her, deciding
that maybe we need a little plain talk between us. “I’ve
had roommates before and they were nothing like you. We’re
different. What we have between us is different.”

Her arm shifts and
her hand goes from the back of my stool to brush against my shoulder.
Her eyes stare at her hand as she strokes me, almost in confusion.
“I’m
not sure what we are.”

“Well, I think
we’re a little north of roommates, a little east of friendship,
and probably a little south of fuck buddies.”

Her gaze slides from
my shoulder to meet mine as her lips turn upward. “I’m
lost.”

I laugh and slide my
hand around the back of her neck, pulling her to me for a kiss. “I’m
lost too. But I’m glad you’re right here beside me now.”

“Me too,”
she admits, and that makes me smile. I release my hold on her neck,
turning to grab my beer as she says, “But you know I’m
afraid to believe in this, right? You know I’ve never had a
relationship before. I have no clue what to do, no clue if I’m
any good at anything. I’m afraid you’re expecting
something of me I can’t give, and that one day, you’re
going to wake up and realize I’m really not someone you’d
want to give the time of day to and that your hero talents are wasted
on me.”